College Football Playoff logo vote was hacked

College football will have a new playoff system in place for the 2014-2015 season, and the people behind the postseason set up a website where fans can vote on what logo they want for the College Football Playoff. Fans could choose to vote for one of four logos (seen above). The winning logo will be announced on Monday.

Voters can log on once per day to submit a vote, but one person apparently was trying to pull a fast one on everyone by hacking the system.

Our contractor running the logo vote has informed us that it has caught a cheater with an IP address in Austin, TX who cast 50,251 votes for logo number four, in violation of our contest rules. While we’re pleased to know how popular our site is, this individual’s IP address has been blocked and all his votes have been removed from logo four’s tally.

As a result, the correct, updated tally shows logo one has 26%, logo two has 38%, logo three has 27% and logo 4 has 9%, with more than 60,000 votes having been cast in less than 24 hours.

On the advice of our contractor, the vote percentage totals will be announced twice daily at 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., ET until the contest closes on Monday, April 29. This will allow the technical experts to prevent any further irregularities from occurring. We have been pleased with the excitement that has been created with the contest. In this particular case, there was a little too much excitement.

What’s so special about logo four that would have someone hack the system to vote for it? I really couldn’t tell you. But here’s the description of the logo on the College Football Playoff website:

“A star, created by a compass with a football at its center, symbolizes the pinnacle of achievement, and the path teams follow from across the nation to the playoff.”

Maybe the appeal was that the logo somewhat resembles the Texas state flag design.

Anyway, this story really should not surprise us given how nutty college football fans can be. Plus, it’s not like this is the first time we’ve seen a fan stuff a ballot box by hacking.